فصل 33

CHAPTER 33

When they arrived at Trepassen House, Abel parked the car and Hal followed him round the house to the main entrance. There were no lights visible, and the house looked almost deserted, the blank windows like black, expressionless eyes. Hal had a sudden premonition of how it might look in twenty, thirty years’ time—the roof caved in, the windows cracked and broken, leaves gusting across the rotting parquet.

“We’re back,” Abel shouted as they entered the main door, his voice echoing along the corridor, and Hal felt her stomach flip, before she could analyze why. But when the drawing room door opened and Harding’s head came out, she realized. It was Mrs. Warren she was afraid of. Before she had time to dissect the realization, she found herself in Harding’s stiff embrace, her cheek against his tweed-upholstered shoulder, as he patted her awkwardly and uncomfortably firmly on the back of the head, like a cross between a Labrador and a child.

“Well, well, well,” he said, and then again, “Well, well, well.” When he pulled back, Hal was astonished to see that his jowly face was ruddy with some kind of suppressed emotion, and his eyes were watering. He dashed at them, and coughed. “Mitzi will—hrumph! She will be very sorry to have missed you, but she has already left to drive the children back home. They have school tomorrow.” “I’m sorry,” Hal said humbly. “I’m sorry to have missed her too.”

“Edward had to leave too,” Abel said. Hal felt a sharp pang of something, quite different from the vague guilt she had felt at the sound of Mitzi’s name. She realized that she had been hanging on to something—the prospect of seeing Edward, looking into his eyes, trying to find something of herself in his face.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “Is he—will he be coming back?”

“I doubt it,” Abel said. His face was rather grim, and he seemed to realize it suddenly, and make an effort to shake it off. As he took Hal’s coat he forced a smile, a rather insincere one. “Unless we get held up here for another weekend, which I sincerely hope we won’t.” “Have you eaten?” Harding put in. “I’m afraid we have all had supper some time ago, but there’s tea in the drawing room and I could ask Mrs. Warren for a sandwich. . . .” He trailed off a little doubtfully, and Hal shook her head emphatically.

“No, please, I’m absolutely fine. I ate on the train.”

“Well, come through and have some tea, at least. Warm yourself up before you go to bed.” Hal nodded, and Harding ushered her into the drawing room, where tea was waiting on the coffee table.

The fire was burning low in the grate, and the lamps on the side tables were lit, giving the room a golden glow that somehow covered up the cobwebs and the cracks in the paneling, the dirt and the frayed curtains, the damp and neglect. The room looked, for the first time, almost homelike, and Hal was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of longing. It was not exactly a longing to stay here, for Trepassen was too gothic and gloomy to ever feel like a truly welcoming place. It had the sense of a house where people had suffered in silence, where meals had been eaten in tension and fear, where secrets had been concealed, and where unhappiness had reigned more often than contentment.

But it was, perhaps, a longing to stay a part of this family. For all his pomposity, the wetness at the corner of Harding’s eye had touched Hal more than she could express. But it was not just Harding. Ezra, Abel, Mitzi, the children—each in their own way had welcomed Hal, had opened themselves to her, trustingly—and she had repaid them . . . how? With lies.

Only Mrs. Warren, Hal thought, unsettlingly. Only she had never trusted Hal.

The thought niggled at the back of her mind as she accepted the cup of tea that Harding poured, and cautiously dipped in a rich tea biscuit. Since those hissed midnight accusations, Hal had been turning Mrs. Warren’s words over and over in her mind, and she kept coming back to the same uneasy conclusion. Mrs. Warren . . . knew.

But had she kept quiet? The only explanation, and it was not a very comforting one, was that Mrs. Warren had something to hide herself. . . .

The clock on the mantel chimed as Hal swallowed the last of the tea, and she, Harding, and Abel all looked up.

“Good Lord,” Harding said. “Half past ten. I had no idea it was so late.”

“I’m sorry,” Hal said. “I’ve probably kept you up. My train was delayed.”

“No, no. You didn’t keep me up,” Harding said. He stretched, his checked shirt pulling up from his belt and exposing a little slice of doughlike middle. “I assure you. But today has been . . . well, let’s just say I’m finding this whole weekend more than a little wearing, and with Mitzi and the children away it’s a chance to catch up on my beauty sleep. So I think, if you don’t mind, Harriet, it will be up the stairs to Bedfordshire for me.” “I’ll turn in too,” Abel said with a yawn. “Where’s Ezra?”

“God knows. He disappeared after supper. Probably out walking. You know what he’s like.” “Did he take a key?”

“Again, I refer the honorable gentleman to my previous answer,” Harding said, a little irritably this time. “God knows. This is Ezra we’re talking about.” “I’ll leave the front door unlocked,” Abel said with another yawn. He rose, brushing imaginary lint off his trouser legs. “Lord knows, there’s little enough to steal. Right. Good night, Hal. Can I give you a hand with your case?” “Good night,” Hal said. “And no, don’t worry, I can manage myself.”

• • •

THE NARROW STAIRCASE THAT LED up to the attic was unlit, and Hal searched for a long time before she found the switch.

But when she clicked it, nothing happened. She clicked it again, but still no light. Her phone was somewhere deep at the bottom of her bag, and with her hands full of luggage, in the end she was forced to make her way upwards in darkness.

There were no windows on the attic landing, and the darkness, as she climbed, was absolute, an inky, sooty blackness so intense that she could almost taste it. When she reached the top she put down her case and felt with her fingertips for the turn of the corridor and the door to the attic room—her room, it was beginning to feel like, though the idea gave her a strange, queasy feeling, as if history were looping round and coming full circle.

This time, although it was stiff, the door gave with a sharp tug, and she fumbled forwards into the room, feeling for the light switch.

When she flicked it, there was again no light, and this time Hal felt a surge of irritation. Had the whole circuit gone? What the hell?

It didn’t matter so much in here, for the curtains were open, and enough moonlight came in to enable her to find her way to the bed, undress, and crawl between the cold sheets.

She was almost asleep, watching moon shadows moving on the wall, when she noticed something.

It was not a fuse. Someone had taken the bulb out of the light fitting in the center of the room, deliberately leaving her in the dark.

All that hung there now was an empty socket.